Dreamland
Margot Robbie is the producer and star of a Depression-era thriller that fails to generate
real drama.
Gun lazy: Margot Robbie and Finn Cole
It is
unfortunate that the two most disabling factors of Dreamland are its director and its producer. The director Miles
Joris-Peyrafitte is so determined to make his stamp on the film that he pushes
in a fish-eye lens here, an overhead shot there, a jarring cross-cutting
sequence – anything to distract the viewer from the story and the characters on
screen. And the producer Margot Robbie has gone and miscast herself as the
leading lady. Her Allison Wells is a Dust Bowl fugitive from justice and her Barbie
doll looks and blindingly white teeth are as distracting as Joris-Peyrafitte’s camera
trickery.
The
backstory, unfolded during a prolonged prologue, is designed to establish the
hardscrabble life in the unhospitable environs of the Great Plains of Texas.
But it hardly kicks things off to a lively start. The Evans family is dirt poor
– it’s the Great Depression – and the teenage son Eugene (the London-born Finn
Cole) is looking for work. Nonetheless, in spite of the remoteness of their
location, they still have electricity, a telephone and a piano. But there are
the dust storms to contend with – fourteen real stinkers in one year – and the
fear presented by the proximity of a gun-toting female bank robber. Eugene, a
devotee of Detective Fiction Weekly
(which he steals), fancies a piece of the $10,000 reward money to apprehend
this malefactor. But then he hadn’t reckoned on her looking like Margot Robbie,
or her turning up at the family barn with a bullet in her thigh…
Joris-Peyrafitte’s
Dreamland seems to want to be Days of Heaven with a dash of Bonnie and Clyde, but has neither the
poetic grandeur of the former nor the stylish brio of the latter. Instead, the
atmosphere is drip-fed through the meticulously crafted production design and
the dreamy voice-over of Eugene’s sister Phoebe (courtesy of the London-born Lola
Kirke). The main problem, though, is that the film feels phony, the dialogue anachronistic
and there’s nary a spark of chemistry between Finn Cole and Margot Robbie. Ms
Robbie has proved herself to be a terrific actress in Suicide Squad and I, Tonya,
but she’s just too glamorous a figure here to be any more convincing than the
rest of the film. The result is a sluggish ride through familiar terrain, with
no sexual frisson or suspense, nor
much of a story to generate momentum. Only Finn Cole, burning with incoherent
frustration, makes the film worth watching. At times recalling a young
Christian Slater, the actor provides a presence that promises great things to
come.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Finn Cole, Margot Robbie, Travis
Fimmel, Kerry Condon, Darby Camp, Stephen Dinh, Tim D. Janis, Pab Schwendimann,
Grayson Berry, Garrett Hedlund, Hans Christopher, Joe Berryman, Frances Lee
McCain, and the voice of Lola Kirke (narrator).
Dir Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Pro Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Rian
Cahill, Brad Feinstein, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Josey McNamara, Screenplay Nicolaas Zwart, Ph Lyle Vincent, Pro Des Meredith Lippincott, Ed
Abbi Jutkowitz and Brett M. Reed, Music
Patrick Higgins and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Costumes
Rachel Dainer-Best, Dialect coach Liz
Himelstein.
Automatik/Vertical Entertainment/Romulus Entertainment/LuckyChap Entertainment/Titan World Entertainment-Paramount Pictures.
98 mins. USA. 2020. Rel: 11 December 2020. Cert. 15.